Psychology of Dwelling and Visual Appropriations—An Anthropological Application

We find ourselves situated within a world that can be experienced visually, for the first time, in its wholeness. Using conceptual analysis, we intend to show that notions born within the practice of habitation, such as the sense of place, place attachment, and hearth, can help us evaluate the psychological implications of the images of Earth taken from space. We chose a phenomenological approach to human habitation because it allows concepts pertaining to connected and inherently interdisciplinary fields, for instance environmental psychology or human geography, to be reunited under the umbrella of an anthropological interpretation. The sensory and imaginary connotations of the notion of place may be noticed starting from the distinction between space as mathematical abstraction and concrete places being experienced directly. An analysis of the nature of this connection leads to the finding that we actively imagine and reimagine the surrounding world as an unfolding space in which we are constantly attempting to dwell. What is of particular interest for us is the manner in which technologically-mediated visual experience may inspire cognitive representations or may generate profound emotions, such as the attachment to a particular place. Therefore, the value of imagination for the anthropology of habitation is not rendered by its compensatory role, but by its link to ontogenesis. Familiar places, which continue to attract us, are capable of triggering unique imaginary processes, reveries which refer us to the primordial steps of ontogenesis with outmost intensity. The process of subjective appropriation of the world begins with that privileged space of origin specific to each of us, the space which we identify with most intensely. Thus, the psychological impact of the image of Earth from space: we become intensely aware that this planet is our Place within a hostile universe.